Yesterday was devastatingly long.

It all started when I arrived at work. It was casual day, and I was wearing my favorite pair of jeans. They're cut slightly higher in the waist so that they make me look long and curvy, which is a pretty grand illusion to work for a $25 dollar pair of pants. There was one problem----I was getting occasional whiffs of cat pee. Now, I have four cats, and this wasn't a huge shock, except I was a bit concerned that I didn't smell it before. I live thirty miles away from my job, and you'd think I would have smelled something, right? So I asked one of the girls I worked with if she smelled anything. She said no, but I knew by this point that something was wrong. She also has a cat, and it could have been on her. We both stood there in a corner, trying to casually sniff various parts of clothing. Hers were OK (they actually smelled a wee bit like dog) but we realized (after a very flexible and totally not casual investigation on my part) that it was coming from the hem of my pants. Perhaps they were thrown into the washer with one of the soiled blankets, from back in the day when we'd had that whole disaster. Or perhaps one of the kittens had a wee accident in the floor, and my cuff had dragged into it (the most likely explanation.)

Great. The more I sat there the worse it seemed to get. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I excused myself and left the building the back way, looking purposeful, as though I'd just forgotten something in my car. I walked several blocks to the market with the intent of buying febreeze. Of course, they were out of febreeze. I did manage to score some original scent Lysol. If you ever want to feel creepy, try standing in line at 8:30 in the morning to buy nothing but a giant can of Lysol.

Back on the street, I was surrounded by people. There was no way to spray my pants and not look like a mental patient, and I had to get back to my desk anyway. I arrived out of breath, trying to hide the can, and ran into my supervisor. Apparently my attorney had gotten lost on the way to court and had been desperately calling around to see if someone could call the court for him. Oops. Well---there were at least three people in the department who could have taken the call, and a million legitimate reasons why I would be away from my desk. I'm away from my desk for a good portion of the day anyway. I offered no explanation, fearing embarrassment.

At my desk, I was faced with the problem of spraying my pants from the knee down (the scent had traveled) and not looking insane. There needed to be a reason for my area to reek of cleaning produce. I decided to spray my entire desk. And my built-in counter/credenza area. And the cabinets. Satisfied that everything smelled of Lysol, and that the spraying noise had been going on long enough to squelch suspicion, I sprayed my pants.

Unfortunately, that seemed to make it worse. I guess Lysol needs to saturate something to remove a smell like that, and until it dries, you smell of both the original odor AND of Fresh Scent, which really smells disgusting. At that point I smelled of cat urine AND cleanser, and my pants were soaked from the knees down.

Then I started coughing. I wasn't in an enclosed area, but I'd used enough that I was getting light headed.

I waved off departmental concern with a vague "oh you know how good it is to disinfect stuff...I must have breathed it in" while hiding my legs under the desk and hoping no one could see or smell them.

At some point (noonish) the smells seemed to go away, and I was no longer dizzy. Still, I got nothing done that morning.

Now, part of the reason nothing got done was that several of us had to go to a post-wedding cocktail party today, and none of us knew what to wear. This party is in honor of some higher-ups, and there was no indication of dress code on the invitation. Furthermore, it was being held at a place with a dress code. So we wondered. Formal? Semi formal? Casual formal? After some deduction it became evident that I had nothing appropriate.

I know a lot of women whine that they have nothing to wear. And I do happen to have a closet full of dresses. However: two are too...um...slutty. The rest are all bridesmaidey. I don't own a little black dress, and a skirt/top combo wasn't quite dressy enough.

After work I set out to buy a dress. It's August. Surely the stores will be filled with dresses! And cheaply!

Well.

The stores were NOT filled with dresses. At least, not appropriate dresses. There were blindingly colored sundresses, and shirtdresses, and the only things I found that were right on the money were huge on me.

I think that sometime around the time everyone started to bitch about skinny models, they changed the sizes on dresses, because every size 3 or 4 I put on (sizes that fit well two years ago) draped on me. I could grab inches of fabric in the back and pull them tight.

I know that people are bitter because runway models are emaciated. And they are. But that doesn't mean that everyone who makes it to 25 has to be over a certain weight or you're not let into the fashion club. Some people are just small, yo.

It pisses me off. If I were to call someone who was a little heavy "fat" she'd whine at me about how men like "real women" and how "real women" have curves. That's a lot of horseshit. Real women come in many different shapes and sizes. Sometimes those shapes and sizes are influenced by habit, and sometimes they're influenced by genetics. It's part of the joy of being human. We're all different. And there's someone out there for every body type. If I can't be a "real woman" because I don't need to shoehorn myself into clothing, than that girl over there who's 4'1" must not be a "real woman" either. Or that women with the size 5 feet. Guess she's just a really mature girl. Apparently it's OK to be skinny if you're really short, and it's OK to be heavy if you're really tall, because then you're a "Petite" or a "Tall" and you'll have a whole store devoted to your needs. If you're average in height but not so average in build, you're boned.

I, apparently, was boned. I don't believe that I need to shop in a specialty store or to spend $200 on a dress. Sure, I'm thinner than I was before. But there are many people much much thinner than I, and they all look gorgeous. Maybe they just have more money and can afford to shop in better stores, I don't know. Anyway, I went from a store, to a shopping center, to a mall.

Here's another side rant. The websites of certain stores and the products of certain stores vary wildly. Midway Mall is apparently in the process of shutting down, because they had no selection in any of their department stores. And that's not a picky woman speaking. I mean literally there was no selection. They had a few size 8s and a few 22s, and really nothing in-between. There were an awful lot of empty shops, too. I give that place another two years before it's gone.

Finally, frustrated and discouraged, I went to another mall. This mall wasn't much better. Maybe they're cleaning out merchandise to get new stuff in? I don't know. Just as the mall was closing, I found one thing that was maybe sort of appropriate. It's ugly, and it barely fits, but it has ties so I can sort of manipulate it. And it was affordable. (They had more appropriate things but I wasn't dropping $100 on a little black dress.) By that point I was sad. I was starting to feel that maybe the problem is me. Maybe I don't deserve to look nice anymore. Maybe this is just part of a terrible downward spiral where my hair gets crazy (check), my face is steroidey (check) and now I can't even dress nicely because there's no point in dressing up a chubby cheeked frizzy haired lunatic. I felt the universe was conspiring against me. I called Joe C and told him my story and he made me feel better by suggesting that instead of being appropriate I try to go out of my way to be as inappropriate as humanly possible. After that I realized I was being ridiculous and that it was foolish to think I could find something the night before an event in the horrible off-season of retail. August and September are the black holes of fashion, why didn't I remember that?

I also realized that there were two other women scrambling to find things as well, neither a size 8 or a size 22, and that they were likely going through the same thing.

The problem wouldn't have felt so dramatic except I hadn't been able to find a bathroom since 4:30 and at 9:15 I really had to pee. I also hadn't eaten.

I got home, threw the ugly wretched dress on a chair, and drank a whiskey and orange juice (which was delicious, although food probably would have been wise) and curled up in bed with the dog and a book. I proceeded to read a whole chapter of "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" out loud to him while he wagged his tail and rested his head on my lap. Right before I got too exhausted to keep my eyes open I started adding commentary. Every time he mentioned that Lucy kept the wardrobe door open because it would be foolish to shut oneself inside a wardrobe, I added something along the lines of "unlike Jerome, who doesn't realize it's foolish to run headfirst into walls." I wanted Steve to get the story, and I felt that adding helpful commentary would make it more real to him. Nevermind that he's a dog and stuff.

I feel much better this morning. Nothing smells like cat pee and I'm sure I won't look quite so crazy once I take a shower and try to flatten my hair a little bit.

Here's a picture of what I ended up with after my desperate search through the malls. I don't like it, but it'll have to do. Next time I'm just going to wear one of the slutty dresses, I swear.